


What We Lac

by phan_anon



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Getting Together, Lactation Kink, M/M, Mpreg, Nesting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:20:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27266344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phan_anon/pseuds/phan_anon
Summary: Alpha!Phil might just have found what's been Lac-ing from his life in his housemate Omega!Dan...
Relationships: Dan Howell/Original Male Character(s), Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 11
Kudos: 115





	What We Lac

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! Welcome to the very first one-shot I am posting on this account. I just felt like we all needed a little more lactation kink in our lives. Thank you to anyone reading this! Feel free to comment or tweet me @phan_anonfics on Twitter <3

Phil’s favorite hoodie was missing.

The hoodie was a lovely green color and the material was worn to a perfect softness because since autumn he’d worn it so often it might as well have been his unofficial uniform. He’d bought it his first week at university at the bookstore and flushed with pride the first time he’d pulled it on and seen the uni’s name emblazoned in white letters across his chest.

In the wee hours of the morning, when he’d stumbled into the house after a long-haul study session in the nearest campus library, he’d pulled the hoodie off, dumped it on the sofa, and crawled off to his bedroom to pass blissfully into sleep.

It was afternoon now, with chilly, grey February light filtering through the living room windows, illuminating a sofa that held two of his housemates and zero hoodies.

“Did one of you guys move my hoodie?” Phil asked, one eye squinted open and voice gravelly with sleep.

“Hm?” said Beth, eyes still glued to the _Friends_ rerun playing on their ancient TV set.

“What hoodie?” said Michael, shooting him an uninterested glance before returning his attention to the TV as well.

Phil just grunted, deciding it wasn’t worth explaining further, and shuffled forward into the room to search for the missing garment himself. He checked the other furniture, peered underneath things for good measure, lifted various other items of clothing discarded by his housemates, and frowned when he found not a single thread of his hoodie. Perhaps it wasn’t the most thorough investigation, but then again, a bright green hoodie was pretty hard to miss.

“Huh,” he muttered. Beth and Michael ignored him. “You’re sure you didn’t see a green hoodie out here anywhere?”

“Hm?” Beth said again.

“Sure,” Michael added.

Phil sighed and decided the next best place to look would be the laundry room. With ten of them sharing this one house, it wasn’t uncommon for one person’s clothes to accidentally get mixed in with someone else’s laundry. (And he highly suspected that at least one of the omegas washed other people’s clothes on purpose, following some weird social conditioning to compulsively care for others.)

In the laundry room, he found Mary, the aforementioned suspicious omega, humming to herself while she primly folded a jumper that he was 99% sure belonged to Beth.

“Morning, Mary,” he rasped, earning him a look over the shoulder and a blinding smile. Mary was an unrelentingly outgoing omega, and he couldn’t help finding her seemingly boundless capacity for cheerfulness intimidating.

“Good Afternoon, Phil,” she chirped with a tiny smirk of amusement. “Looks like you could use some coffee. Like me to whip you up a pot?”

He shook his head. He considered Mary something of a paradox. The ten of them consisted of four Alphas, four betas, and only two omegas. That wasn’t so unusual. Even in this more enlightened era, omegas were still significantly underrepresented in higher education, and those who did make it to uni often preferred to live either at home or in omega-only housing. It usually took someone fearlessly-confident like Mary to willingly cohabitate with a bunch of strange Alphas and betas. Phil had assumed this meant that Mary must also be the type of forward-thinking omega who wasn’t all caught up in old-fashioned gender roles, but….the unnerving amount of deference she showed to him and the other Alphas in the house strongly hinted otherwise.

On the other hand, the other omega among his housemates was as progressive as they came. He was studying Theatre, and he and Phil—an English and Linguistics student—had had several in-depth discussions about portrayals of omegas in popular media. Phil would spout off about feminist readings and queer theory, and Dan would go on thirty minute-long rants about commercials where they put eyelashes on, like, dishwashing detergent to let you know it was ~f e m i n i n e~, and they both would end up checking the time and realizing hours had passed without them noticing.

Yet, unlike Mary, Dan had ended up in a mixed living situation not by choice but by procrastination. He’d confessed to putting off applying for housing so long that all of the omega-restricted options had already filled.

“Not that I think it’s, like, morally reprehensible for unmarried Alphas and omegas to cohabitate,” Dan had laughed after admitting his procrastination to Phil during one of their usual rambling discussions. “It was more to make it easier to handle my heats. I could’ve gone through them in my own room and all. Plus it would have put my parents’ and my Alpha’s minds at ease.”

That was another simple fact of life when it came to the omegas Phil had met at university. A majority of them had Alphas back home, or even Alphas they’d come to uni with. Mary and Dan were no exception.

Phil hadn’t come to uni for the express purpose of finding a mate, of course, but maybe he had kind of hoped that now that he was finally away from his tiny village where everyone knew everyone else, he would at last be able to find someone that fit his weirdness. And maybe when he and Dan had hit it off almost from the moment they’d met, he’d kind of gotten his hopes up that he’d finally found that someone (because sometimes omegas who smelled like other Alphas were still single or had recently broken up with someone…if you were really lucky).

But he’d dealt with the disappointment months ago and was now just happy to call Dan his friend. As it turned out, Dan really, really needed good friends right now.

“Phil?” Mary’s perky voice cut across his thoughts.

“Sorry, yeah, I’m good. Hey, have you seen my green hoodie?”

“Oh, yes, I saw it on the sofa earlier,” Mary grinned, folding yet another of Beth’s jumpers. 

“Huh,” Phil said. “It’s not there anymore.”

“Oh, dear,” the omega replied, patting the stack of jumpers and then smoothing out a few wrinkles with a loving caress. “Shall I help you look for it?”

“Thanks,” Phil said, “but that’s okay. Just, if you come across it, let me know?”

“Of course!” Mary chimed, tilting her head to one side with a crinkle-eyed grin before picking up the stack of clothes that Phil now noticed were all Beth’s. He waited until she’d left the room to raise an eyebrow. He might have to have a word with Beth about taking advantage of Mary’s generosity. Then a memory of the way Mary would sometimes cuddle up to Beth on the sofa during housemate movie nights popped into his head, and he decided it was probably best not to get in the middle of whatever that was.

Once he was alone, Phil poked about the laundry room a bit on his own, but his hoodie was clearly not in either the washer or dryer, or any of the various laundry baskets his housemates had abandoned here.

With a puzzled frown, Phil turned around and headed back up the hallway toward the kitchen. Mary had been right that he could seriously use some coffee, but unlike _some_ Alphas he wasn’t going to name, he didn’t expect an omega to prepare it for him.

He’d only taken two steps from the entry of the laundry room when the door to his left opened up and his other omega housemate stepped out.

The soft, brown curls that covered his head were rather disarrayed, and his eyes had a sleepy, smudgy look about them. He had one fist raised to knuckle at one eye, and the top button of his pajama shirt was unbuttoned, letting a sliver of pale skin stretched over collarbone peek through.

Phil stopped short, staring. 

A moment later, a waft of scent rolled over him, pouring from Dan and the open bedroom door behind him, and Phil’s eyelids fluttered shut as he drew in a deep breath of the gorgeous scent. It was warm, enveloping him in a feeling of cozy comfort, and smelled of sleep and safety and home.

Okay, so maybe Phil wasn’t _entirely_ satisfied with just being Dan’s friend. But he wasn’t about to act on those feelings, not when Dan had made it clear that he was happily mated…and not when he was already expecting his mate’s child.

They’d discovered this fact only about two months after the beginning of the first term. Dan had diligently prepared for the first heat he’d be going through away from home and his Alpha, stocking up on food, water, and supplies, arranging a room for himself at the university’s seclusion facility for omega students in heat, and notifying his housemates of the dates he would be gone.

But his heat symptoms had never appeared. When Phil had expressed surprise that it was two days past the time Dan had said he’d be checking into the facility, the omega had brushed it off, saying that sometimes stress messed with his body’s rhythms. He’d just started uni and just started living away from his family and his Alpha for the first time, so of course he was under an unusual amount of stress.

Once two whole weeks had gone by with no heat in sight, though, Dan had canceled the reservation at the seclusion facility and instead made an appointment with the campus health center. They’d confirmed what his home pregnancy test had already told him: he was pregnant.

It had been Mary whose shoulder Dan had sobbed into when he first came home with the news, but Phil had easily overheard the choked conversation through the house’s thin walls. Dan’s bedroom was wedged right in between the laundry room and Phil’s.

“We were using protection,” he’d heard Dan cry, “God, I’m not ready to be a dad.”

Mary had made soft, comforting noises and then asked Dan when he would be moving back home.

“Wh- Huh?” Dan had sounded absolutely mystified, almost as though he hadn’t even considered that option.

“To have the baby,” Mary had explained. There was a pause, and then the brightness in her voice had dimmed. “Unless… You aren’t planning to… I mean, you are having the baby, right?”

That was the point at which Phil had decided that he should _not_ be listening in on this conversation, even if it was through no fault of his own. He’d grabbed his headphones off his nightstand and put on “Wincing the Night Away” and done his best not to wonder how Dan was answering Mary’s question.

He hadn’t needed to wonder for very long. Later that evening, a tentative knock had come at Phil’s door, and when he’d called “Come in,” Dan had stepped inside, curls damp and smelling of shampoo and shower gel. His face had a fresh-scrubbed glow to it that didn’t quite distract from the redness of his eyes.

“Can I hang out in here for a bit?” he’d asked, voice tiny and unsure.

“Yeah, of course,” Phil had said, sitting up at once from where he’d been slouching on his bed and shoving aside a couple of textbooks to make room for the omega. Dan had spent so much time in Phil’s room in the two months since they’d become housemates that it had become almost habit for Dan to drop onto the bed beside him and scoot back until he leant against the wall.

Once he’d stopped wiggling, the two of them had sat in silence for several long moments before Dan drew in a long, ragged breath.

“I guess you heard.” 

They’d already established by that point that their shared wall allowed neither of them much privacy and had reached a mutual agreement to ignore anything either of them overheard—short of the sound of one of them being murdered.

Dan must have decided, though, that this was worth violating the agreement.

“I heard,” Phil had said, reaching over and placing a sympathetic palm upon Dan’s shoulder.

“I talked to Rick,” Dan had said, lifting his own hand and placing it over Phil’s in a brief acknowledgement of the gesture. He’d let his hand drop then, so Phil had done the same. “We decided to keep it.”

“That was quick,” had slipped out of Phil’s mouth before he could think better of it. The omega had turned a look on him that he’d found hard to read.

“It was what we both wanted,” he’d replied, still looking Phil in the eye almost as though he were daring the Alpha to contradict him.

“I’m glad then,” Phil had said, gazing back into Dan’s eyes just as steadily.

Dan had blinked first, looking away and then shifting closer and laying his head against Phil’s shoulder. It had happened so quickly Phil had had no time to prepare. His heart had given a huge thump, and he’d felt heat flush his whole body, but he’d struggled to keep his breathing normal.

“This sucks major balls,” Dan had muttered. “I think I might have to drop out at the end of the year.”

Those words had made Phil’s heart sink all the way down to the pit of his stomach. 

“That does really suck,” he’d agreed, voice soft because if he’d raised it any higher, Dan might have heard how tight and painful his throat had become.

They hadn’t discussed it much more that night. Instead, Dan had kept his head on Phil’s shoulder, and eventually Phil had picked up his textbooks again and got back to his studying. The omega had stayed there snuggled up next to him in silence for nearly an hour before at last murmuring something about getting his own studying done and slinking back to his room.

A week after Dan had told Phil he was keeping the baby, Dan’s parents had shown up. They’d taken Dan away with them somewhere, but he’d come home alone again and slunk into Phil’s room to curl up next to him and, exhausted, explain that they’d been trying to convince Dan to drop out of uni and move back home at once.

A few days later, Dan’s Alpha had shown up too and had stayed for a few days. Rick was a year older than Dan and attending university in London, but he’d taken a little time off to check in on his omega. Phil had spent nearly his entire stay with his headphones on, and he hadn’t missed the fact that Dan never introduced the two of them. He’d wondered if Dan’s Alpha had a jealous streak. And he’d wondered whether he was someone worth being jealous over.

Once Rick had gone, Dan had come to Phil’s room for the first time in days and said that Rick had also wanted him to drop out and move home.

“He was worried about me having to deal with all of this alone… But I think seeing how friendly everyone is here helped ease his fears.”

Phil had nodded and agreed that he was glad Dan wasn’t leaving. And if he’d had a few opinions about the idea of Dan’s Alpha pressuring him to drop out of uni, he’d kept those to himself.

After that, taking care of Dan had become the joint mission of their entire household. Allie, one of their beta roommates who was earning her degree in Sociology, had gone on an excited rant about how Dan’s pregnancy had stirred the housemates’ deep-seated instincts and was causing them to exhibit pack-like behavior. For his part, Phil had thought they were just a group of generally nice and caring people who didn’t mind doing things like accompanying their housemate to his pre-natal check-ups or carrying his bag to class for him on days his back hurt too much. (And maybe more often than not it was Phil doing those things, but Dan was his friend, damn it. Those were things he’d do for any friend!)

Dan was now entering his sixth month of pregnancy. His due date was dangerously close to end of term exams, but he’d affirmed over and over again that he was determined to see out his first—and possibly only—year of uni, no matter how difficult.

As he stood there in the doorway of his bedroom, Phil saw that he had one hand cupped around the noticeable bump stretching the front of his pajama top.

“Phil,” he murmured in a sleep-roughened voice. “You’re up early.”

Phil snorted a laugh and shook himself out of the stupor he’d fallen into. Dan’s scent had been a regular part of his world for a full five months now. He didn’t know why he was letting the scent get to him all of a sudden.

“Just woke up from a nap?” Phil asked.

Dan let out a jaw-cracking yawn and nodded.

“That’s what Saturday afternoons were made for,” he sighed, lifting his arms overhead in a big stretch that revealed the lower edge of his baby bump. When his shirt settled back down over his upper body, it draped in just the right way to perfectly map out the shape of his erect nipples beneath the dark fabric.

Phil jerked his gaze away, forcing himself to think of anything else.

“I’m gonna make some coffee. Do you want…?” he blurted out but then trailed off as Dan gave him a raised-eyebrow look. “Right, yeah. Um, no caffeine. I could make you something else. Some herbal tea? Or a glass of—”

“I’ll just come with you,” the omega shrugged, a smirk playing about his mouth. He gestured further down the corridor. “Lead on.”

_Get it together, Lester_ , he admonished himself and started back up the hallway toward the kitchen.

“Hey, Dan,” he said over his shoulder once he’d got his thoughts back in some semblance of order, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen my green hoodie. I left it on the sofa last night, but I can’t find it now.”

“Oh,” came Dan’s voice after a pause that was just a shade too long. Phil turned far enough around to see the omega’s face. He was looking down, a small frown pouting his lips. “Nope, haven’t seen it.”

Phil turned away again and stepped into the kitchen, frowning a bit too.

“Okay,” he said, feeling like he should ask something more but having no idea what. He shrugged it off and dropped the subject.

As Phil brewed his coffee and Dan dug about in the refrigerator for a snack, the two of them chatted about their weeks, the beginning of term, and the first assignments they had due. They’d both spent several weeks in their hometowns over winter hols and were still somewhat in the catching up phase. The conversation drifted here and there as they eventually settled at the kitchen table, Phil with his mug and Dan with a hastily thrown together salad that was heavy on the spinach.

It wasn’t until they’d both washed up their dishes and begun heading back down the hallway toward their respective rooms that Phil cleared his throat and said, “If you do happen to see my hoodie, just let me know.”

He watched Dan carefully from the corner of his eye and noted that he was once again looking away.

“Yeah,” the omega murmured and then cleared his throat before adding in a louder voice, “Of course.”

Late that night, when all of Phil’s housemates had shut themselves away in their individual rooms and most of them were probably already asleep, Phil was still wide awake, nominally studying, though just now his thoughts had wandered back to Dan that afternoon and how suspiciously he’d behaved when Phil had asked about his hoodie.

But what reason did Dan have to lie about something like that? Either he’d seen the hoodie or he hadn’t. Unless he’d like, accidentally spilled food on it or something and was embarrassed to tell Phil? That didn’t sound like Dan, though. He usually had no problem coming right out and saying what was on his mind, good or bad. So why…?

A sound disturbed Phil’s thoughts, jarringly loud in the late-night quiet of the house. 

He jerked upright and looked around, trying to figure out what it was. It was a faint tapping that stopped abruptly before starting up again, a little louder. And then came another noise.

“Phil?” 

It was the sound of Dan’s voice, muffled slightly by the intervening wall but audible nevertheless.

“Yeah?” Phil answered, trying to keep his voice quiet enough not to disturb Michael on his other side but loud enough that Dan would still hear.

“Are you up?”

Phil glanced down at the textbook he hadn’t really been reading for the past quarter of an hour at least.

“Yeah,” he said again.

There was a pause that lasted long enough for Phil to become aware of the harsh sound of his own breathing. Then,

“Will you come here?”

Phil’s breath suddenly caught in surprise. Dan wanted him to come to his room?

He’d been in there before a few times, of course, back in the first weeks after they’d moved in. Once Dan had learned he was pregnant, though, his bedroom had become completely off-limits to anyone but Dan (and on a couple of occasions Mary or Allie).

None of Dan’s housemates was bothered by that. It was normal omega behavior. Pregnant omegas felt most comfortable being able to retreat to a safe space that was fully under their own control. Their instincts prompted this behavior as a way of protecting themselves and their offspring. Typically no one other than the omega’s mate would be allowed into their so-called “nest,” though of course Dan’s mate wasn’t around, which was why he’d resorted to allowing in the most non-threatening members of his household when the situation absolutely called for it.

Phil, however, was an Alpha—the exact opposite of non-threatening as far as an omega’s instincts were concerned.

Yet now, suddenly, he was inviting Phil into the inner sanctum.

Phil swallowed hard.

“Phil?” the omega’s soft voice prompted from the other side of the wall.

“Yeah, coming,” Phil called, sliding off his bed and creeping across the room to ease his door open as quietly as possible. He hadn’t a clue what this was about, and if any of his other housemates happened to be awake still, he definitely didn’t want to end up having to explain it to them.

He slid out into the corridor on silent, sock-clad feet and pressed his door gently closed again. Then he took the few steps needed to reach the neighboring door and scratched softly at the old, worn wood.

“Come in,” came Dan’s voice, just barely audible and still sounding very muffled.

Phil turned the knob and opened the door slowly, doing to his best to keep the ancient hinges from creaking too much. He was hit once again with that wave of Dan’s scent, even more powerful now that he was stepping inside the bedroom itself. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, but for some reason, lately Dan’s scent had just smelled _so good_. Tantalizing even. Dangerously so.

He eased the door shut and leaned against it, eyes closed for a moment to gather his wits about him as he acclimated to the omega’s overwhelming scent.

“Come here,” he heard Dan say again.

He opened his eyes and squinted into the dark of the room. Unlike Phil, Dan wasn’t up studying or reading or doing anything that required light, apparently. His lamp was off, and the only light in the room filtered faintly through the blinds of his one small window.

“Dan?” he asked, uncertain.

“On the bed,” came Dan’s small voice, so he shuffled off in that direction, toward where he knew Dan’s bed was, pushed against the wall their rooms shared. By the time he reached it, his eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness, so he peered down, trying to see Dan amidst the pile of lumpy bedclothes.

What he could make out was the top half of a face and a pair of dark eyes gazing up at him from deep within a blanket burrow.

“What’s up?” he said, trying to sound non-chalant, as though it were completely normal for him to be inside a pregnant omega’s nest in the middle of the night. “Are you okay?”

A moment’s silence, then, “Yeah…mostly.”

“Mostly?” Phil repeated, frowning. “So that means you’re at least a little bit not okay?”

Another pause.

“Yeah.”

Dan’s voice was very, very soft, and Phil could guess that he felt just as uncertain about this as Phil did.

“What can I do to help?” Phil asked, as all of the housemates had learned to do over the past few months of living with an omega who, pregnant or not, was still fiercely protective of his independence.

He was answered with a tiny sigh.

“Can you just…come here,” Dan finally breathed.

It was on the tip of Phil’s tongue to say that he already _was_ there. He was standing as close to the edge of Dan’s bed as he could get without being actually on it, so— Oh. Right. 

He swallowed and then gingerly lowered himself onto the very edge of Dan’s bed.

Once he was seated, one of the omega’s hands sneaked out from beneath his pile of blankets, felt around until it bumped into one of Phil’s hands, and then intertwined their fingers.

Dan’s hand squeezed his, lightly, warmly. Phil’s heart gave a decided thump, and he squeezed back.

“I’m just so…” Dan began, but then trailed off. 

Phil waited.

Dan sighed again, then pulled the hand he held in close, under the edge of his blankets and right up to his face. Phil could only watch in mute shock as the omega leaned forward and rubbed one soft cheek agains the back of the Alpha’s hand. Warm breath tickled his knuckles and the skin between his fingers, but he didn’t pull away.

“Would you…” he heard Dan murmur and felt his lips against one knuckle. “Would you hold me, for a little while?”

Phil’s heart was fluttering inside his throat, and he wanted to say ‘yes’ and crawl into bed beside the omega so, so badly, but _what in the hell_ did Dan mean by any of this? 

“I know I’m being weird,” Dan breathed, almost as though he had read Phil’s mind, or at least read the confusion in his expression. “I know this is weird,” he repeated. “But. It’s just— It’s been so long, and I feel like if someone doesn’t touch me right now I’m going to, like, scream or explode or maybe shrivel up and die. I think it’s mostly the hormones, and the doctor said—”

“But…what about Rick?” Phil asked, stupidly probably, but nothing Dan was saying was making any sense. Hadn’t Dan just spent a whole month back home with his Alpha? They hadn’t returned from winter holidays _that_ long ago, or was that really what Dan meant when he said ‘It’s been so long’? In his current hormone-riddled state, did it take only a couple of weeks of separation from his Alpha to make him this desperate?

He heard Dan let out a little laugh, a very unhappy sound.

“Rick’s not in the picture anymore.”

Phil froze where he stood, blinking down at Dan in utter shock. Dan’s mate had _left him_?

“And even if he was,” Dan was plowing forward, his words all slurred and breathy as if they were sliding out of his mouth against his will, “the moment he found out I was pregnant, he refused to lay a finger on me. He was afraid of hurting me or something…I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it, Phil, _please_. I need this. Please.”

So many thoughts slid through Phil’s head—questions, objections, worries, a few fantasies—but he shoved them all aside and focused on the one that was most important: Dan needed him right now.

“Okay,” he breathed. “Yeah, just, what do you need me to do?”

Dark eyes turned up at him then, wide with mingled pleading and relief.

“Hold me?” he said again and then lifted a corner of his blankets in invitation.

It all felt kind of surreal, like something out of one of Phil’s frustrated dreams, but then he was sliding into the soft pocket of warmth in the bed beside Dan, and the omega was rolling onto his side and pressing his back up against Phil’s front and pulling Phil’s arm down over him until Phil’s whole body was draped around him as though it were yet another of his blankets. Before Phil knew what he was doing, he had his nose buried in the crook of the omega’s neck and was drawing deeply of his delicious scent.

A small, choked sound escaped Dan’s throat, something half between surprise and arousal, and it sent a shiver down through the core of Phil’s body.

“You smell so good,” Phil murmured into the heated crease where the omega’s throat met his shoulder. He heard Dan mutter something in response, but his brain was too busy reveling in Dan’s scent to waste time decoding the words. 

Dan smelled of being tucked up warm and cozy in winter; he smelled of being held tight and safe in someone’s arms, of the excitement of the first snow of autumn and the relief of the first buds of spring. He smelled so thoroughly and splendidly _omega_ , and that was when it finally occurred to Phil why Dan had begun to smell so alluring to him lately. 

He no longer smelled of Alpha. Rick’s scent had faded over these past few months, leaving only Dan’s perfect omega scent.

“You _feel_ so good,” he heard Dan’s voice whisper back, and the omega pressed himself closer to Phil’s body. “God, you feel amazing.” And he let out a blissful, little sigh.

One of Phil’s hands was wedged into the tight space between their shoulders, while the other rested on the bed just in front of the omega’s softly-swelling belly. Tentative and slow, giving Dan all the time in the world to say something if it wasn’t what he wanted, Phil moved his hand until it was pressed against Dan’s bump. Beneath the smooth fabric of Dan’s pajama shirt, Phil could feel the heat of the omega’s skin and the firmness of his swollen womb beneath that.

Dan had said that he’d started feeling the baby move around a couple of weeks ago. Phil had wanted so many times to ask if he could try feeling it himself, but he’d never had the nerve.

“I think they’re asleep right now,” came Dan’s voice.

Phil was starting to feel a little sleepy himself, which was odd considering that a moment ago, his heart had been hammering loud engouh to wake the whole household. He’d thought that being with Dan like this would turn him on, and it did. It definitely did. His cock had taken a decided interest in the subtle movements of the omega’s bottom against it as he’d pushed himself closer. But there was something about being here that just felt so _right_ and so _comfortable_ , like this space in Dan’s nest had been shaped just for him, had been just waiting for him to slot himself into it. He could feel his body relaxing in a way it hadn’t in a long, long time.

He let his eyes drift close as his hand slowly rubbed over Dan’s baby bump, up and down, up….and then down….

He heard Dan let out another little sigh, sounding just as drowsy and contented as Phil, and the Alpha guessed that the omega too must be drifting away…

Phil’s hand was moving upward, over the topmost part of Dan’s belly and was about to slide its way downard again when the edge of his palm encountered something that made him pause: a wet patch on Dan’s shirt. 

If he’d been more awake, Phil’s brain might have figured out what he was feeling without any need for further investigation. In his half-conscious state, though, his hand moved almost by reflex, feeling further upward, stroking at the dampness and trying to figure it out.

Phil’s cheek, where it still lay against the side of the omega’s throat, felt the vibration of a small sound, and then his ears heard it, a whimper followed by a tiny exhalation.

“P-Phil,” the omega gasped, his whole body jerking against the Alpha’s, jarring them both from their drowsy comfort.

It took Phil’s brain just a moment longer to get the message that he was the one causing Dan’s body to react like this, but it was long enough for him to become aware of the stiff flesh beneath the damp cloth he was rubbing, of Dan’s left nipple, erect now where Phil’s fingers had stroked it awake.

“Oh, shit,” Phil breathed, hastily pulling his hand away and letting it drop back onto the bed. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, don’t,” came Dan’s soft voice, his own hand rising from the bed to take hold of Phil’s wrist and stay its motion. “It’s okay. It felt…good. Really good, Phil.”

Whatever combination of warmth and coziness had been lulling Phil to sleep was overcome at once by the frisson of sensation the omega’s words sent shivering through Phil’s chest and down between his legs.

“It did?” he murmured.

He felt Dan’s head move, just the tiniest of motions—a nod.

And then the omega’s hand, still gripped around Phil’s wrist, was moving Phil’s hand back up, off the bed, back toward where he’d had it before.

“Just…just be gentle. They’re really sensitive right now.”

Phil’s heart was thudding painfully loud again. His eyes were wide open, mostly blind in the dim room, so he squeezed them shut and focused on the sensation of his fingers coming to rest against Dan’s warmth again, against his night shirt with its suggestively damp patch, against the stiff little peak beneath.

“I-is this okay?” he heard Dan breathe. “Do you want—?”

“Yes.” The word choked out of Phil almost against his will. He let his fingers move, let them stroke again over the fabric-covered nub.

“Unh,” Dan let out a little cry that made Phil’s cock throb and his hips push involuntarily forward, bucking against the omega’s round behind. Phil let his fingertips brush over just the tip of Dan’s left nipple before dragging across the damp fabric to tease over the right one too. Dan’s open mouth let out another moan, soft and high, and he pressed his hips back into Phil’s, squeezing the Alpha’s half-hard cock between their bodies.

How many times had Phil caught sight of these little nipples poking out from one of Dan’s shirts and forced his eyes to turn away? Dan rarely bothered wearing a bra, tiny as his breasts were, and Phil had done his best not to think too much about that fact, not to wonder how Dan’s nipples might feel rolled between his thumb and pointer finger.

He tried that now, gave Dan’s right nipple just the slightest pinch through the fabric of his shirt.

“Ah— Phil—”

“Can I—?” the Alpha asked, reaching a hand over to the nearest button of the omega’s pajama shirt and pausing.

“Uh huh,” he felt Dan’s head moving again in a jerky nod. “Yes, god, please, yes.”

So he slipped the button from its hole, letting the pajama shirt gape and sliding his hand inside the space it opened up for him.

Dan’s skin was heated and damp when Phil’s fingers finally touched it, just at the gentle swell below his left nipple. He let his fingertips brush up, catching a bit against the dampness, until they encountered pebbled skin. He tried to imagine what that part of Dan must look like. His skin was pale but with a warm undertone, and his lips were a lovely brownish-pink. Were his nipples the same color, or darker? Lighter, perhaps? He dragged his fingertips higher, brushed them over the peaked point, then caught it between thumb and forefinger and gave it an experimental roll.

Dan let out a hard huff of air, and Phil could feel the way his body had twitched, so he did it again, rolling the nipple ever so gently between the tips of his fingers. He was rewarded with another heave of breath and a roll of the omega’s body against his own. His fingertips were now just as wet as Dan’s skin, and he couldn’t help wondering about the liquid on them. He could smell it, the sweetness of it. It didn’t smell like milk, not really, and that made him curious.

Before he’d really thought it through, he was pulling his hand from inside Dan’s shirt and out from under the stacked blankets.

He raised his fingers to his mouth, gave them a little sniff. Sweet. Very sweet. Then he stuck his tongue out and licked, tentatively at first and then eagerly.

“Mmm,” he hummed. It tasted delicious.

“Phil…what are you doing?”

He froze, tongue pressed against three fingertips. Shit. What _was_ he doing?

“I…I just…” he stammered, shoving the hand back underneath the covers as though he were trying to hide evidence of a crime. “I was just curious?”

He felt a quick tremor pass through Dan’s body. A moment later, he realized it was a laugh.

“It’s fine, Phil,” he said, voice rich with amusement. “I’ve tried it too. Not to toot my own horn, but I thought it tasted pretty good.”

“Yeah,” Phil agreed, relieved that Dan was taking this in stride. God, he couldn’t believe he’d just tasted the omega’s _breast milk_. He tried for a laugh of his own, and said, “Almost makes me wish I was a baby.”

Dan’s body shook against his again, and this time the puff of air from his nostrils was audible.

“Phil,” he murmured, turning his head just a little. If there’d been enough light in the room to see by, he might have been looking Phil straight in the eye. “Are you saying you want to suck my tits?”

The Alpha stilled, every single thought evaporating from his mind to be replaced by the sound of Dan’s voice saying ‘suck my tits.’ His heart leapt into action, hammering inside his chest, and his cock woke right back up.

“Uh,” Phil said, very intelligently, “yes?”

The light from the window was just enough to highlight the movement of the omega’s cheek as his dimple appeared.

“Well, you should have just said so,” he whispered. Then, just like that, he scooted slightly away from Phil and rolled onto his back, face turned toward the Alpha.

Phil could make out the curve of his cheek, still crinkled in a smile, a few tousled curls, and the faint glow of pale skin amidst dark fabric where his unbuttoned shirt gaped open. He didn’t know exactly how he’d got here. Maybe this really was some sort of incredibly vivid sex dream he was having, but he wasn’t about to question it.

He shifted nearer Dan, sliding one leg across his body until he knelt over the omega, knees nestled either side of his hips. He made sure to yank the blankets up around his shoulders, keeping them both safely cocooned in the pocket of Dan-scented warmth. He bent forward, resting his weight on one hand and lifting the other to the still-buttoned top button of Dan’s pajama shirt.

The omega was watching him, he thought, his face upturned, his chest heaving with quick breaths that made it clear he wasn’t as blasé about all this as he wanted Phil to think.

Phil’s fingers slipped the button through the hole, taking a moment to push the two sides of the collar wide, left, then right, exposing more of that skin that shone palely in the dimness. Then he lowered his hand and finished off the rest of the buttons as quickly as he could, letting the shirt fall the rest of the way open until Dan’s whole chest and rounded stomach lay bare beneath him.

“Cold?” he whispered, and Dan shook his head.

“You?”

Phil laughed and shook his head too. His whole body was alight with hot, pumping blood. He wasn’t cold in the slightest.

He lifted his free hand to Dan’s chest again, dragged his fingertips up the slight dip between the omega’s two breasts. Dan squirmed a bit beneath him, hips rising off the bed and pressing something small and hard against Phil’s buttocks.

He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing back against the omega’s erection for just a moment before leaning forward again, bending his head down, allowing his lips to take the place of his fingertips.

Dan’s skin was hot against his lips. He left a kiss there, between his breasts, another slightly higher, just beneath his collarbone, then let his open mouth drag over the surface of the omega’s skin until his lower lip caught against his peaked left nipple.

A whimper left Dan’s throat, low and wounded. Phil paused there, let his lip rub back and forth, drawing another shuddering sound from the omega.

Then he closed his lips over the nipple, let his tongue slide down, let it taste the sweetness again. Dan’s hand appeared then, shoving its fingers into Phil’s hair none too gently as he moaned a quiet ‘ _Phil_.’

The Alpha raised his free hand to cup the underside of the omega’s tiny breast, and then he sucked, pulling at the nipple with his lips, while his hand squeezed tentatively at the mound of soft flesh.

“Fuck,” Dan breathed. “Fuck, yes, like that.”

A tiny drop of liquid spilled from the nipple between his lips and kissed the tip of Phil’s tongue. He lapped it up, loving the slick roughness of the swollen skin. He sucked harder and shifted his weight until he could raise his other hand from the bed and let the fingers fumble for Dan’s other nipple. He stroked it, rubbed the pad of his thumb across it while he sucked more liquid from its twin and pushed his hips down to meet Dan’s where they rose up from the bed.

The fingers in his hair gripped and tugged, stinging his scalp. He pulled back for a moment, swiped his tongue across the nipple before moving to the other. It was wet too, leaking moisture that his tongue eagerly gathered, licking up from the base of Dan’s breast to trace the sweetness to its source.

“Phil,” he heard Dan whisper. He was panting, and his hips were still moving, rubbing his hard cock against the Alpha’s bum. “Phil, can you squeeze it, like you did the other one?”

Phil shifted around until he could get his left hand around Dan’s breast, cup it and apply a gentle pressure.

“Like that?”

“Yeah,” the omega breathed, “and…from the top too? Like, rubbing downward? It makes the, uh, the milk release more easily.”

Phil bit his lip and then moved his palm up to rest on the flesh just above Dan’s breast. He pressed and then smoothed his palm down, raised his hand, repeated the motion.

“Yeah,” Dan repeated. “Now suck it again.” And he accompanied the words by tightening his grip on the back of Phil’s head and guiding it downward.

Phil held his hand in place, cupping the top of Dan’s breast, and then closed his lips around the hard nipple again. His tongue darted out reflexively, cleaning off a drop of liquid that had already slipped out, and then he sucked and pressed his hand down and sucked harder. 

The omega moaned loudly, and then Phil felt several warm drops of sweet liquid spill out onto his tongue. He swallowed them eagerly and sucked and swallowed and squeezed, and Dan squirmed beneath him, the pressure of his cock against Phil’s buttocks steadying into a rhythm, until at last the flow of liquid slowed and stopped.

“The other one,” Dan gasped the moment Phil raised his head, and he was already tugging on the Alpha’s hair, pulling him to his neglected left nipple.

Phil raised his right hand and pressed it against Dan’s chest, pushing down even as he lowered his mouth to the nipple, took it between his lips and pulled, sweet liquid dribbling out with each suck.

“Yes…please…” Dan moaned, “So…so close…”

Phil’s mouth sucked and his hand squeezed and his ass pushed down into the omega’s erection while his other hand groped until it found Dan’s mouth. He brushed his fingertips against the open lips, felt the indistinct words Dan breathed out as his hips pressed up and he yanked Phil’s hair. Phil paused only to let his tongue lap up a particularly large drop of Dan’s milk, and when he closed his lips and sucked again, Dan let out a groan that started deep and went high-pitched and seemed to be wrenched from deep within him. He jerked his hips hard against Phil’s arse a few more times, and then finally the omega’s body went slack beneath Phil, and his hand dropped from Phil’s hair and flopped onto the mattress.

A few more tiny drops of liquid slipped out onto Phil’s tongue, and then he pulled away and pressed a reverential kiss to the sweet skin. He moved a bit to his left and did the same for the other.

“Uff,” he heard Dan gasp as his entire body twitch. “Very, very sensitive now.”

Phil planted an elbow on the mattress either side of Dan’s still-bare chest and leaned back until he could see something of the omega’s face.

His mouth was still open, moist puffs of breath still spilling out of it. Phil let his eyes drift down the long, slender neck, over the collarbones to the two dark circles on his chest, both glinting slightly in the faint light.

He looked back up at Dan’s face, and the two of them stared at each other for a several seconds before Dan reached back up and pulled Phil’s face down close. For a moment, he thought the omega would kiss him, but as their lips drew near, instead he felt a tongue swipe across his lower lip, disappear, and then come back to taste his upper lip too.

“Mm,” Dan said.

“Taste good?” Phil whispered, his breath pooling in the tiny space between their lips.

“Yeah,” Dan whispered back, then pulled Phil’s head back down to his chest until the Alpha’s cheek was resting upon the moist, heated skin between his breasts.

Phil settled in, stretching his legs out, shifting his weight over to his right side until it was mostly supported by the mattress rather than Dan’s body, curling one arm against his side and placing the other where Dan’s fingers could find his and intertwine with them.

It wasn’t a comfortable position, not by any means. His cock was still achingly hard, and he knew the arm wedged between their two bodies was already well on its way to numbness. There was no way he would fall asleep like that, not even if he closed his eyes for a bit, and let his breathing slow to match Dan’s, and emptied his mind of all its questions about what in the hell had just happened between him and his omega housemate…

On Sunday morning, Phil woke to an empty bed.

He didn’t notice at first because he was nestled so deeply within Dan’s cocoon of blankets that there probably could’ve been a whole litter of puppies in there with him and he’d never have felt them.

He did catch on pretty quickly to the fact that he was not in his own room. Everything smelled far too much of Dan and almost nothing like him, but the pervasive omega scent just made him feel all the cozier. Dan’s scent surrounded him like a warm embrace, disguising the lack of the omega himself for far longer than it probably should have.

Eventually, he did stretch out a lazy arm, expecting it to wrap itself around Dan’s body and pull him closer to Phil’s. It took a few gropes of the piled bedclothes for his sleepy brain to finally work out that there was no Dan inside of them. 

That was when he finally sat up, feeling very grumpy that such an integral part of his cozy lie-in was missing. Something caught the corner of his eye then: a flash of familiar bright green. 

He frowned. _Huh?_

He turned a little to the left, and there, shoved halfway down the crack between the bed and the wall was a crumpled, green hoodie. _His_ hoodie. His _favorite_ hoodie.

Lips parting in a puzzled frown, he leant forward and tugged at it. It fought him for a moment, but he at last yanked it free, and yes. Yes, that definitely was his hoodie. He knew because the letter “o” had a scratch through the top of it from that unfortunate fork incident during only the second week he’d owned it.

He blinked down at the garment, feeling entirely unequipped to decipher its meaning, and then… Then, he noticed another familiar piece of fabric sitting closer to the foot of the bed, and wait, there was another peeking out from between two layers of blanket. Holy shit, that was his Sonic t-shirt. He hadn’t worn _that_ since some time in December…

The bedroom door creaked open, and Phil jerked his head up to see Dan backing into the room, a steaming mug held in each of his hands. Distantly, Phil’s mind registered the mingled scents of coffee and herbal tea.

“Hope I made it the way you like,” the omega was saying as he turned toward Phil. When caught sight of Phil, his mouth was still open, ready to say something else, words Phil was destined never to hear.

Instead, as he gaped at Phil sat amongst his bedclothes with several items of stolen clothing clutched against his chest and a faintly accusatory frown wrinkling his forehead, he came to an abrupt stop and promptly shut his mouth.

“Oh,” the omega said, his eyes dropping to the floor. “Um, so, I see you found your hoodie.”

“I did,” Phil agreed, “and one of my t-shirts and…a pair of my boxers?” 

“I can explain?” Dan suggested, glancing up from the floor and nibbling at his full lower lip.

Phil’s mind caught up with the moment then, and he realized Dan was still stood half in the hallway, letting in a chilly gust of air and balancing two very full mugs in hands that had started to tremble.

“Here,” he said, tossing the pile of clothes aside and shoving off the bed. He gently pulled Dan into the room and pushed the door shut so that the radiator could get down to the business of warming the room back up. Then he grabbed the mugs from Dan’s hands and carried them over to Dan’s bedside table.

Freed from his task, the omega shuffled over toward the bed, climbed underneath the covers and wrapped them tight around him with only his face peeping out, returning to the same protective position he’d been in when he’d first invited Phil into his room last night.

Phil considered him for a moment, considered wide eyes gazing up at him for the span of several breaths before walking over to the bed and kneeling down beside it. Seated on the floor like this, his eyes were just about level with Dan’s.

“You can explain?” he asked, picking the conversation back up right where they’d left off.

Dan nodded, blankets rustling all around him with the movement.

“Yes,” he said, his voice very soft. “It’s a very simple explanation. I, um, I stole your clothes. And I put them in my nest. Because they smelled like you, and, um, I wanted _you_ in my nest.”

Phil swallowed and thought about the t-shirt that he strongly suspected had become part of Dan’s nest a full two months ago.

“I wanted you in my nest,” Dan repeated, a little louder this time, “but, uh, I didn’t have the balls to ask. Sorry. I guess I was just…afraid.”

Phil frowned. Dan had been afraid…of him?

“Why?”

He heard the omega let out a huff of laughter. It sounded strangely bitter.

“Phil, I’m pregnant. With someone else’s baby. How many Alphas do you know of that would happily hop into bed with me in that state?”

It was on the tip of Phil’s tongue to point out that Dan was painfully attractive, and that most Alphas would fall all over themselves to get the chance to share a bed with him, but he knew that wasn’t actually true. Most Alphas Phil had met were raging assholes who’d probably consider Dan “damaged goods” or “claimed property” or something else equally degrading.

But he wasn’t that to Phil. Not by a long shot.

“Well, I know of one,” Phil pointed out, an almost-shy smile threatening to appear at the corners of his mouth.

Dan’s eyes opened a little wider at that, filling with something, some emotion that made them shine as though with tears.

Phil lost the battle with his smile then. He felt it spreading across his entire face.

“What made you change your mind then?” he asked. It wasn’t quite the question he should be asking right now, but that conversation could wait. He had a strong suspicion they had all the time in the world to have it.

Dan returned his smile, though his was something more of a smirk.

“Figured you were about to catch me with your hoodie anyway, so…It was now or never.”

The Alpha reached a hand out and brushed the curls away from the omega’s forehead. He thought about yesterday afternoon in the hallway, when Dan hadn’t been able to meet his eyes. Well, he certainly didn’t have that problem now. Neither of them seemed to be able to tear their eyes off each other.

“I’m glad you did,” Phil murmured and then leaned forward to press a soft kiss just above Dan’s left eyebrow.

“Yeah?” The question was very small, just the faintest whisper, but Phil was so close, it didn’t matter.

“Very,” he whispered back.

“So…does that mean I can stop stealing your clothes and have you instead?” Dan asked next, his voice unsteady with a ripple of laughter.

Phil snorted, but instead of answering, he just leaned in closer and gave Dan a long, much-needed kiss right on his open lips.

“Yes,” he said once he’d pulled away again, “but I’m taking my hoodie back.”


End file.
